Alpha Rising (36 page)

Bach mulled over the white phroo’s
appearance in his foggy mind. NASA’s “think-aloud protocol” kicked
in. “That phroo came for his mate, but didn’t stay. Why’d he go
back?” Wobbling to his feet, he grabbed the caged female and moved
her to the cooler inner chamber. Then he headed back to the
boulder, snatched off a glove, and wedged his arm behind the
crevice all the way up to his elbow. The air inside felt cool and
clammy, almost refrigerated.

Leaning hard on the huge rock, he pushed
with all his might, but it didn’t budge. He bellowed from scalding
lungs, “Star! Everyone! Out here. Hurry!”

The others rushed to the boulder and,
together, rocked it back and forth until momentum rolled it aside,
exposing a cool, dark passageway two feet wide and five feet high.
A chilly draft streamed from the shaft into the sweltering cave,
swirling the stifling air into a foggy mist. Bach saw the white
phroo balled up three feet inside the shaft. He scooped it up and
handed it to Xian.

Bach and Star hurriedly removed their
headgear, and all four revived themselves with deep breaths of the
tunnel’s cool, subterranean air. Then Bach hunched over and stepped
into the shaft. “I’ll be right back.”

“
Careful,” Star
said.

After he’d moved a few feet in, the others
lost sight of him. When several minutes passed with no
communication, Star, Xian, and Ptero eyed each other without
words.

Star yelled into the shaft. “Bach,
hurry.”

No reply.

Pacing, she nervously rubbed her hands on
her hips, then leaned in and yelled again. “Bach?” She looked at
the others. “Something’s wrong.” She entered the passageway,
calling into the darkness. “Bach?”

No answer.

Farther in, she called again, “Bach, where
are you?”

His voice echoed back as if he were a mile
away. “It’s cool all the way—continues on. Get the others and the
animals.”

Star stepped back into the cave and helped
Xian and Ptero gather the twig cages and pouches. The three were
ready to go when Bach returned.

“
Hurry!” he said as he set
foot inside the ovenish cave.

Star entered the shaft first, followed by
Xian, then Bach and Ptero, all carrying pouches and cages.
“Careful,” Bach warned, “It’s a gradual incline through slippery
muck.” Bending low and unable to see, the four moved deeper and
deeper into the tunnel. The only sounds were their struggling
breaths, and from their feet sucking up and down in the
sediment.

Feeling her way along the slime-coated walls
with one hand while carrying one cage under her other arm and
another in her hand, Star came to a narrow area where she had to
angle her body and reposition the cages to fit though. She called
back to the others, but at the same time pitched forward with an
unexpected cry.

“
Star, you okay?” came the
sound of Bach’s voice.

“
I’m okay. I caught my foot
on flat rocks and dropped the two cages.”

“
I found them,” Xian said
from behind.

Star rustled around in the darkness. “I’ll
move the rocks.” An odd silence followed. “Bach. They’re etched or
inscribed.”

Bach squeezed past Xian and ran his hand
over two flat limestone tablets. When he added them to his load, an
ominous rumble shook the tunnel. “Another one’s erupted. Let’s
move!”

The four pressed on in the darkness,
crouching, crawling, and climbing through the narrow cavity of
oozing muck. The loads they carried now weighed like millstones
around their necks, and Bach complained. “This has to end
somewhere. It’s taking too long.”

Minutes later, warm air and a faint orange
light flowed into the shaft from above.

Then, with hands and legs covered in slime,
the four emerged atop a thirty-foot mount. Two miles at their
backs, the pyroclastic flow marked off its territory with a roaring
vengeance and the area of caves where they’d been was ablaze.

Bach and Star replaced their headgear. She
yelled over the rumbling, “I can’t tell which way to go through all
the ash and smoke.”

Bach looked out over the surrounding area.
“I can’t either.” He pointed ahead in desperation. “Let’s get more
distance between us and the lava and try to figure it out.”

They descended the mount single-file and
Ptero caught up with Bach at the bottom. “Isn’t your ship at the
co-op landing site?”

“
No. There was a small
active volcano near there, so we landed several miles beyond in a
valley with one barren region.”

Ptero stopped walking. “Did you see a
fireball trail?”

Bach slowed and looked back at Ptero.
“Fireball trail?”

Ptero nodded. “Our pathway to the place of
worship. A fireball made from colored stones.”

“
Yes, yes. The trail with
the gemstone comet,” Bach said. “It’s right near the
ship.”

Ptero pointed straight ahead. “That
way.”

#

The four hastened down the comet trail, then
stopped at the rocky ridge in front of the ship. Exhausted from
carrying the extra load, Bach set the heavy stones on the ground to
catch his breath before climbing the mount’s steep face.

Ptero looked at the stone tablets, excited
and curious. “Our leaders have searched for these for generations;
they’re depicted on our most ancient mount.” He knelt for a closer
look. “It is said they are the Creator’s laws.”

“
Awesome!” Bach replied. He
pulled the remote control from his pocket, reloaded his arms with
the cargo, and the four proceeded up the ridge. He had his finger
on the button to open the ramp, but stopped short at the top at
seeing two huge apes standing near the ship.

Ptero and Xian seemed more shocked than Bach
and Star. Ptero looked at Xian in disbelief. “Who are they?”

She eyed them curiously, “I’ve never seen
them before.”

The docile apes quietly watched the four on
the ridge. The smaller one clutched something in its left hand.

Bach opened the ramp, grumbling. “We don’t
have time for this!”

The ancients stumbled down the ridge and
raced past the apes into the ship.

Concerned that the apes may cause trouble,
Bach descended first, with Star close behind. He set his cargo on
the ground and cautiously strode onto the ramp. Both apes stepped
onto the ramp at the same time. When they showed no signs of
aggression, Star moved to Bach’s side.

Breathing hard with apprehension, Bach
looked at Star and shook his head. “Help me get them off the ramp.
We have to get out of here!”

“
Let’s lead them off.” She
set down the twig cages she carried and extended her right hand to
the smaller of the two.

The small ape mimicked Star’s outstretched
right hand. Inside its leathery palm was what appeared to be a mark
made by a branding iron—a cross in a circle.

Bach noticed it first. “What?” he shouted
louder than intended as he grabbed the ape’s hand and examined the
mark.

The larger ape moved forward.

Trying to get a good breath
from behind his headgear, Bach thrust out his hand as if to
say,
stay back.
The ape immediately held up its hand in the same way. It also
had a crossed circle seemingly branded into its hand.

“
This is crazy!” Bach said,
looking at the ape’s hand again. “They have the symbol. But we
already have our two people.” He looked around, wildly confused, as
the fiery disaster bore down.

Star looked again at the symbol in the
primates’ palms. “We can’t leave them.”

The smaller ape stepped closer and looked
into Bach’s eyes as if communicating. Then, it was as if the
Creator shone a light on Bach’s thought processes and he remembered
the instructions he’d received on the mount. “Oh, God!” he yelped
excitedly. “Star, this is part of the Creator’s instruction. He
said to resolve trials through spiritual discernment. This is a
trial.”

“
This is when you pray,”
she replied.

Bach whispered a prayer.
When he opened his eyes, he knew that the symbol in the apes’ palms
met the Creator’s requirement for passage onto the Ark. “Hurry,” he
said to Star. “We’ll take them.” Yet he couldn’t help
wondering,
What are apes doing here and
how did they get here?

As Bach and Star rushed up the ramp with the
primates, the smaller ape stopped for a moment and handed Star a
pocket-sized fur pouch closed by a drawstring. Something rattled
inside. Star hurriedly tucked it inside her E-suit.

Bach led the animals to their module, and
Star retrieved the cages and stone tablets from the ramp. The
volcanic air had warmed by ten degrees. She rushed to the cockpit
and closed the ramp just as Bach returned from the animals’
module.

Ptero and Xian stood nearby, still suffering
from heat fatigue. Ptero coughed up stale smoke. “We don’t know
those two. We’ve never seen them before.”

Xian added, “I thought we had all the animal
species accounted for.”

“
We’ll figure it out as we
go,” Bach replied. “Time to get out of here.” He pulled off his
E-suit and readied for liftoff.

Star hurried Ptero and Xian to their
quarters, then stored her E-suit and headgear and took her place
alongside Bach.

The Ark ascended to a diminishing view of
half of Zarephath glowing like a molten sun.

*****

Star leaned back in exhaustion. “It’s a
miracle we made it through all that,” she said to Bach. “The two
creatures we just boarded that you call apes are extremely
interesting, of higher intelligence than the other animals.”

“
Yes, they are,” he
replied. “But they’re too big to use the facilities in the
E-module, and there are no specialized chambers left anyway, so I
placed them in with the animals.”

Star nodded. “Do you think this is their
natural state, or were they once a higher life-form that evolved
into creatures able to withstand all the toxic waste on their
planet?”

“
Interesting question. I
wish we could ask them.” Bach was quiet for a moment. “Let me share
a different theory about apes with you,” he said. “Some
anthropologists on Earth believe that primates were the earliest
form of man, and that they evolved into the people we are
today.”

After a moment’s thought, Star said, “I
believe that evolution could occur in either direction, but not to
drastic degrees.”

“
That makes sense,” Bach
replied.

Star listed Xian’s and Ptero’s names on the
roster, but unknowingly misspelled them as Shan and Terro. “What’s
next on our mission?”

“
Started with seventeen
days … two left,” Bach replied. An odd sigh escaped, almost as if
he tried to hold it back, but couldn’t. “That includes getting back
to Dura. We’re not gonna make it. We don’t have enough fuel.” He
flashed a laser pen at the suspended panel. “Look at this. Dividing
acceleration, times distance to the last planet into energy
available, we’ll be on an empty glide heading back to Dura. I can’t
shake a weird feeling.”

“
Focus on the goal and
pray. The Creator will see this effort and his people
through.”

“
By the way, what’s in the
little pouch that the female ape handed you?” he asked.

“
Don’t know. It’s back
there with my E-suit. I’ll get it.”

Star carried the jangling fur pouch back to
the cockpit, then sat beside Bach and shook it gently over his
waiting hands. A dazzling array of sparkling diamonds, emeralds,
rubies, sapphires, and dozens of other colorful gemstones tumbled
out.

She examined the jewels one at a time. “It’s
amazing that something this beautiful comes from the ground.”

He picked up a round blue gem. “This one’s
the color of your eyes.”

Embarrassed, she changed the subject. “We
must keep these safe for the apes.”

“
Think about the little
phroos who seek out these jewels,” Bach offered. “No wonder
everyone wants to own a phroo. I hope our two little ones thrive
and start a family.”

Star smiled and wrinkled her nose as she put
the gemstones back in the bag. “Can you imagine a baby phroo? A
little tiny one?”

He nodded with an electric grin. “It would
surely be cute.” Then he turned serious. “I’m still in awe of those
stone tablets. Ptero said the engravings might be the Creator’s
laws.”

“
I’ll try to electronically
decode them when we get back to Dura. But what made you bring them
along?”

“
Don’t know. Just overcome
with a feeling.”

Monitoring planet Zarephath for the last
time after breaking the gravity field, Star cried out in alarm,
“Bach! Look! The whole planet’s an inferno!”

Fearing what was to come, Bach advanced the
Ark’s engines to full power.

Not three seconds later, the blazing sphere
exploded before their eyes, blasting molten debris into space with
the velocity of meteors. Viewed from the rapidly ascending Ark, the
flaming planetary fragments appeared to inch through space.

Bach’s stony expression spoke volumes. In
delivering the ship from disaster, the powerful launch cost most of
their fuel.

*****

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

After reading the journal entry for
Ashkelon, their last stop, Bach knew that a unique search effort
lay ahead. Seventy-five percent of the planet’s surface was covered
by water. An aerial view showed suspension bridges connecting five
islands that looked like they’d been cut and pasted onto a watery
background, and floating buildings, spillways, boats, and dinghies
completed the scene. The landing site for co-op ships was near a
small island shipyard where vessels were stored and repaired. Bach
set the big ship down there, then disembarked with Star.